How to make homemade breakfast sausage

As a high school student, Jana Erwin fell madly in love with Washington, D.C. Eight years, a couple of degrees and an internship later, Jana moved from Arizona to the East Coast with high hopes of changing the world. After five years in ...

Spice up your breakfast with homemade sausage

Making homemade breakfast sausage is as easy as 1-2-3! There is no end to the creative sausages you can make once you know the basics.

Step 1: Pick your meat

Sausage can be made of any ground meat you pick. Pork and pork blends are the most commonly used meats for sausages because of their robust flavor. Pork can blend easily with both sweet and savory flavors and can be easily customized, making it an ideal choice. If you are looking for a healthier alternative, consider using a low-fat ground chicken or turkey. Be sure to pick ground poultry that does not include the skins or you could actually end up with a higher fat content than that of pork! The sausage will not be as moist, but it will have a good flavor and lower fat content.

No matter what meat you pick, buy about 2 pounds. The sausages you make will feed roughly 6 people.

Step 2: Pick your seasonings

The sky is the limit. There is no right or wrong answer to the question of how to season your sausage. You can keep it very simple and just add salt and pepper or create a fiery sausage full of red-pepper flakes! It all depends on the breakfast you are serving. For a more traditional breakfast sausage, add 1-2 teaspoons of sage, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and 1-2 teaspoons of both salt and pepper. You can even choose to season the meat by including grated onion, apple or pear!

Step 3: Mix, roll and press

Shaping a sausage patty is very simple. Once your seasonings are mixed into your meat, go ahead and make meatballs. Simply roll the ground meat into balls and set them aside. Once all your meat is rolled up and roughly the same size, flatten the meatballs out. Put a ball between the palms of your hands and press. The patties won't be perfectly round, but don't worry too much about that. Even perfectly round patties don't cook up into perfectly round sausages.

Step 4: Cook and enjoy!

To cook the patties, warm a nonstick pan over medium heat on the stove. Add 4-5 patties at a time. Saute each patty for about 5-7 minutes on each side until it's cooked through and no longer pink in the middle. Repeat this process with the rest of the patties. To keep the sausage patties warm while the rest are baking, heat your oven to 200 degrees F and then turn it off. Place the cooked patties on a paper towel–lined plate in the warm oven. The paper towel will soak up any excess fat from the sausages so they won't be too greasy.